color: Additive Colors

Colors whose beams of light in various combinations can produce any of the color sensations are called primary, or spectral, colors. The process of combining these colors is said to be “additive”; i.e., the sensations produced by different wavelengths of light are added together. The additive primaries are red, green, and blue-violet. White can be produced by combining all three primary colors. Any two colors whose light together produces white are called complementary colors, e.g., yellow and blue-violet, or red and blue-green.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Symbolic Uses of Color
• Properties of Colors
• Subtractive Colors
• Additive Colors
• Apparent Color of Objects
• The Visible Spectrum
• Bibliography

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2024, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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